A Reckless Character, and Other Stories

... I had a good and sedate wife [thus he began], I loved her heartily, and we begat eight children. One of my sons became a bishop, and died not so very long ago, in his dioces...

"But tell me now," she went on, with redoubled force, "whether my friend was in any way to blame? With what could she reproach herself? She was punished, but had not she the rig...

He suddenly wheels round. Will you believe it, I sprang back, so frightened was I!--His face had been dreadful before, but now it had become ferocious, frightful! He was as pale...

I beheld a woman of five-and-twenty,--belonging to the petty burgher class, to judge from her attire,--with a large kerchief on her head. Her face was simple, rather round in co...

Altogether, his health was remarkable, unprecedented. I have already told you that until his death he preserved an almost childish freshness of complexion. He did not know what...

"Yes, there has," put in P., a grey-haired old man, who had been born about the twenties of the present century;--"there were reckless men in days gone by also. Some one said of...

Along the ravine, on one side are neat little storehouses, and buildings with tightly-closed doors; on the other side are five or six pine-log cottages with board roofs. Over ea...

Clara's father ... (he sometimes asked his wife when he was drunk: "Who was the father of that black-visaged little devil of thine?--I was not!")--Clara's father, in the endeavo...

Arátoff went about his customary avocations, busying himself now with one, now with another; but his work did not make progress, was not a success. Suddenly he noticed that he w...

But what are they to do, poor fellows? Although it is not proper--generally speaking--to worship ... yet in this case, if one does not do it, he will find himself classed among...

I was standing on the crest of a sloping hill; in front of me lay outspread, and motley of hue, the ripe rye, now like a golden, again like a silvery sea.

And the old man bought bread for himself with the copper coins which had been given him, and sweet did the bit which he had begged seem to him, and there was no shame in his hea...

Muzio first played several melancholy airs,--which were, according to his assertion, popular ballads,--strange and even savage to the Italian ear; the sound of the metallic stri...

Alexyéi Sergyéitch had received a scanty education,[36] like all nobles of that epoch; but he had completed it, to a certain degree, by reading. He read only Russian books of th...

Arátoff fell asleep immediately, and slept until morning. He rose in a fine frame of mind ... although he regretted something.... He felt light and free. "What romantic fancies...

And now how vividly do my old people stand before me, and what a good memory I cherish of them! And yet, during my very last visit to them (I was already a student at the time)...

"In Ostróvsky's' Grúnya'[62] I believe. But I repeat to thee: she had no love-affairs! Judge for thyself by one thing: she lived in her mother's house.... Thou knowest what some...

The Malay did not stir at Fabio's entrance, but merely darted a glance at him and turned his eyes again upon Muzio. From time to time he raised himself a little, and lowered the...

It ended in Kupfer taking him, on the following day, to the Princess's evening assembly. But Arátoff did not remain there long. In the first place, he found at her house about t...

[23] One of the ancient religious ballads sung by the "wandering cripples." Joseph (son of Jacob) is called by this appellation, and also a "tzarévitch," or king's son. For a br...